


Frames

by teaandchess



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's True Form, Demons, F/M, True Forms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2517512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaandchess/pseuds/teaandchess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg and Castiel can both see under the surfaces of what they pretend to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Castiel

  They were meeting in one of the motel rooms for the fourth week in a row when Meg sensed that Castiel wasn’t as up for their usual banter and bicker sessions. He was using her for information on Hell and she was using him to keep one step ahead of Crowley. So far it had worked out perfectly.  
   Some side benefits too. Secretive as he was, Castiel did have a habit of sometimes running on a tangent about something of interest and Meg had figured out she could learn about his side the more she let him talk. He was solving some of her questions about angels without burning her out of her meatsuit for her trouble.  
   But when she opened the door to his knock and saw him on her doorstep, her comment of “Well, if it isn’t the prettiest angel in Heaven” was met with stony silence.  
    “Aren’t I just the luckiest demon in the world?” she tried again but he didn’t blush and fluster like usual.  
   Okay, she thought, maybe he was touchy about his borrowed looks.  
   He locked the door and turned toward her.  
   “You think that?” he asked in a low voice as he pulled the drapes. When he turned toward her, Meg saw he was all braced and ready for a fight. She could read the signs of it now and it thrilled her, made her feel like an adrenaline junkie looking for their next high-speed hit.  
   “Bad day at the office, Clarence?” she teased to hide how she didn’t like that silky voice he was using on her.  
   “I think you don’t understand what I am sometimes.”  
    “You think I want you for your body?” She made a show of looking him up and down. “Might not be wrong. Least you smell better than some of I’ve been with.”  
    Meg grinned cheekily and brushed by him to get to her mini-bar, but he caught her by the arm. When she struggled, he twisted her around like a dancer into his arms. Letting out a startled curse, she shoved at his chest and he only held her until she stopped squirming.  
   With a deceptive tenderness, Castiel smoothed her hair away from her face and stared at her like he might a bug. Staring back, Meg cocked her head on the side. This was not what she was expecting from the winged wonder. She’d really been hoping for more boot-knockin’, less face stroking.  
  “What do you see when you look at me?” he asked suddenly and she rolled her eyes.  
   “Fishing for compliments?”  
   “I’m serious.”  
   Meg chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully and smirked coyly.  
   “A pretty boy angel. All broody looking with dark hair and blue eyes. You know, stereotypically good looking guy with perpetual scruff. The ‘mothers, hide your daughters’ sort.” She saw him actually huff in frustration. “Not what you wanted?” She leaned forward and simpered mockingly. “Oh, Castiel, you are so very pretty and handsome and rugged and, oh baby, take me now.”  
   He made a face. “The looks of a vessel have nothing to do with me.”  
   “No?” She eyed him up and down. “Can’t complain about it.”  
   “No, but what do you see when you look… deeper?”  
   Meg peered close at his face. “Crow’s feet and chapped lips that are in serious need of some Blistex?”  
   He glared at her.  
   “Seriously, Clarence, what are you expecting?”  
   “What do you see under this face?”  
   “Bones and blood.”  
   He knew she was lying, trying to avoid the real question, and Meg knew she was caught when he leaned down, so close that their noses touched.  
   “Look at me,” he ordered and despite her annoyance, she found herself snared in those eyes. “Look under what you want to see.”  
   Meg felt nearly hypnotized as his voice dropped to a deeper octave and his grip brought her even closer.  
   “Because I want you to realize what it is you are dealing with,” he finished and Meg’s head tilted back further, her eyes flickering to black as Castiel let her see a glimpse of what he was.  
   To look fully at him would have blinded her, burned her eyes out where she stood, but she had the slightest feeling that him within the vessel was softening the blow. As it was, the glow of light was so intense she felt her eyes water a little. It was a fight not to cringe and look away.  
   Brilliant and hot, the light poured out from behind the structure of bone and flesh, and with sudden clarity she saw beneath the man. Like a curtain opening before her eyes, she saw what the vessel hid. Saw the hint of multiple heads, discovered a creature whose features were separated to hold the eyes of many. Wings spread out between them, little more than barely corporeal wisps of shadow and light, and the many pairs swirled in the air and settled around them. The touch of them was like ice on her skin to contrast the heat of his light, and Meg bit back the urge to groan in pain.  
   The entire room rumbled in reaction to the power he was revealing and she swayed on her feet, wanting to rip away to give her eyes a rest from the sight of him. The hands on her body suddenly felt clawed, dug deep into her flesh, but still she couldn’t look away. Her body was tight in reaction to him, ready to run, to hide, from the enormity of what she was seeing as three eyes stared at her. The one in the centre of the first glowing face blinked slowly and she saw flickers of blue in the light.  
  “Do you see?” the creature asked, the voice too high to be her angel’s. It was melodic and yet discordant, like a hundred violas screeching at once to get her attention. Meg felt her eyes blur as Castiel’s head…heads… all dipped around to face her and the intensity of the many gazes upon her was too much.  
   “Quit it with the light thing. You’re giving me a headache,” Meg growled, her darkness snarling around her like a thorny fence in reaction. That third eye blinked again, and one of the wings lifted to curl between them, shading her from his light.  
   “I’m sorry.” The high voice lilted, accented by Enochian guttural tones she was sure, and she saw the heads all cock to the side to stare at her, the spindly connected necks twisting. That was when she knew it was Castiel she was seeing. That gesture was all Castiel.  
   Almost shyly, the first head bobbed. “Am I that strange?”  
  “Yeah.”  
   “This is only a hint of what I am.” He didn’t seem proud of it, the odd head lowering almost shyly, the luminous eyes going to the floor between them. “I would terrify a human like Dean or Sam if I showed them this form.”  
   “I can see why,” Meg admitted. “Why am I not dead?”  
   “I’m shading it from you. Like a veil.” The wing between them fluttered up and hid his face. “I know I seem large and very strange. But in Heaven I am almost small compared to others.” He seemed embarrassed by that admission. “I was a soldier and I was very… ordinary. You would be terrified of an angel like…”  
  “I’m not terrified, Cas.” Meg felt the grip of his hands returning to normal, claws disappearing as he shaded his form even more, inch by inch of that scalding light receding. “I’m just… impressed.”    
   “Impressed?”  
   “Yeah.”  
   She saw all the heads bob excitedly, as if pleased by her interest. The eyes on her were obviously thrilled and she heard a hum of pleasure surround them. The sight would have been comical if it wasn’t for the knowledge that he could just flare up and he’d burn her out easily.  
   Deciding to act casual, Meg gestured at the shadowy wings surrounding them. “So the meatsuit for you is…”  
   “Like being stuck in a car.” He shrugged one of his shoulders but the wings didn’t leave the main face. Meg watched as those three eyes stared at her almost shyly. “It is very confining.”  
   “I bet.” She grinned. “Like you’ve been stuffed in a sardine can?  
   “Yes.”  
   He sighed and shuddered, the wings slowly disappearing into his body and Meg caught a glimpse of his true faces again. Like lights turning off, the many eyes closed one by one, leaving only dark shadows where the heads had been. The wings gave her one last brush, leaving a remnant of ice behind that made her shiver, and then they were gone as well. The room plummeted into darkness for a moment before the electricity resumed, the lamps flickering on and off.  
   Ignoring the strobe effect, Meg watched as slowly more and more of him was veiled from sight, returning to just a dark-haired man with blue eyes. With another flash of light, suddenly she was staring at the Castiel she knew.  
   He still had hold of her body and for once was in no rush to let go.  
   Curiosity made her reach out and touch his scruffy cheek. She almost imagined she felt the heat from such light still lingering on his skin.  
   “You didn’t run,” Castiel muttered as she raked a nail down his jawline.  
   Meg smirked. “Ah, Clarence. I’m a demon. Scary as you are? I’ve seen worse when I look in the mirror I’m sure.”  
   He didn’t say anything to that but touched her cheek in return.  
   “I’m not so sure about that.”


	2. Meg

  She was glorying in hate-filled bloodshed, all demon and all darkness. Meg would toss her hair out her eyes, taunt the other demons, and then press the attack when they charged blindly at her. She was clever and fast.  
   But ultimately a destructive force, to herself and the rest of the world.  
   Castiel watched Meg fight and felt a strange emotion at seeing her obvious thrill at the massacre she was causing. It wasn’t disgust or anger he experienced but something just as uncomfortable, something he didn’t have a name for. For an angel, such strong emotions rattled him more than he ever let on.  
   This was a demon who he’d let see a glimmer of his true self and she had not flinched.  
   Strange creature. She bothered him.  
   It was why he had followed Crowley’s demons when the rumour came to him that they were hunting down the last of Lucifer’s followers. Maybe there was something different about Meg, something changed between their first meeting and now.  
   Even up here, overhead on a catwalk and braced against a rail, he could see what he’d waited to see.  
   Sweat beaded on her forehead as Meg fought in the light of the factory, neatly slicing and ripping through the latest round of Crowley’s demons. When there was a spurt of blood and a scream, Meg’s delighted laughter made Castiel lean against the rail and watch with a bit more interest because that laughter changed her. Hair whipping about her and her eyes black as pitch, she resembled more of an avenging fallen angel than a demon to the naked eye. Her darkness coiled and spewed outward around her, like puffs of smoke fighting to escape the confines of her body.  
   Castiel shifted uncomfortably because the sight actually…affected him.  
   “Are you going to just watch all day or are you going to help?” Meg suddenly called out and his head jerked up, surprised to have been found out. Glancing down, he saw that there were only two demons left.  
   “You seem to be holding your own,” he commented and Meg laughed again.  
   “Damn right,” she said as she buried her blade in the neck of one demon. The other one shot out of his meatsuit, escaping death for now.  
   Castiel watched Meg as she took in deep gulping breaths and wiped her bloody hands on her victims’ clothing to clean them. She tossed her dark hair over a shoulder, gave a jaunty twitch of her hips, and then disappeared.  
   He didn’t move,waiting.  
   She never disappointed him, predictably appearing just to his left. When he turned toward her, she squirmed under his arm, putting herself between him and the rail. Determined as ever to push his boundaries, she used her body to torment him with what he didn’t dare have.  
   “You like to watch, Clarence?” Meg asked. She batted her eyelashes in a way that was just terribly wrong for a demon.  
   "You did very well on your own.”  
  “Sometimes a girl likes a boy to fight for her.”  
   “You’d complain if I did,” he countered and Meg laughed.  
   “Probably.” She tilted her head. “You like watching me? What are you seeing?”  
   Honesty burned his lips and he didn’t stop himself. He wished suddenly to understand sarcasm a bit more. Heaven knew he could use it to describe her as she once described him.  
   “I find it interesting that you want to overthrow Crowley but you chose such a deceptive body to do it in. Your form is very… short. I almost have the impression that even as a demon you are small.” He looked at her. “Maybe that is why you rebel so much. Compensation.”  
   ”You just know all about me, huh?” Meg asked but the way her eyes flashed let him know he might be right. “Well, since you are so disappointed in my looks, let’s stick to business.”  
   Ignoring the hint, Castiel put his arms on either side of her and clasped the rail tightly. Meg’s jaw jutted out at him, lips pursed and tight with tension, and he tilted his head to look at her underneath the meatsuit  
  He saw her features melt away a little, revealing in patches what he knew was lingering within. The true face of a demon and Meg’s appeared no different at first to him. Grey and hideous vines of corruption stretched over her skin, complimenting her black yawning eyes and the almost fanged teeth that grinned back at him. Her hair still remained dark and he sensed rather than saw the darkness oozing from her. Smoke curled all around her, invisible to the most naked eye, but he felt it touching his vessel.  
   It was when he pushed a little more, trying to see if there was something else, that Meg’s change continued.  
  He could see an almost extension of her entire body, something bestial and grotesque, compacted within the human framework but escaping into shadow like a reflection of what was really inside. Horns protruded from every surface, her hands becoming taloned mangled limbs, and her figure shadowy as he saw portions of the rest of the beast she was.  
   When he reached up to touch her face, the rest of the mask of her meatsuit fell away, her complexion no longer perfect. The skin on her face was cracked and grey, several horns protruding from her cheeks and jowl as if they’d been shoved into her forcefully.  
Such pain. Such a hellish creature.  
   He should be repulsed.  
   “You keep looking at me like that, Castiel,” Meg warned, “I’m going to think you’re getting a crush on me.”  
   The true-voice was even darker, more rumbling growl than sultry woman. A growl made from hundreds of years of torture, he was sure.  
   “I find your face interesting,” Castiel admitted.  
   “Join the ranks. If you’re talking about what I really look like, I’d win Demon Beauty Contests for the black eyed. Though I’m nothing on Crowley in a speedo, sorry to disappoint.”  
   He ignored the sarcasm and his hand pushed a little on her cheek. He envisioned touching the first cracked horn. “These look painful, no wonder your kind hides as much as ours. The shame…”  
   Meg hissed and pulled her head away from him. “You think I’m ashamed of it?”  
   Castiel heard the sarcasm changing to anger. “You…”  
   “I survived them, Castiel. They were twisted into my soul as proof of what I am. I lived to tell another day, climbed out of that Pit, and these show it.” Her head twisted and jerked and he swallowed as he watched her face change, fully revealing to him when even angels sometimes couldn’t fully see.  
   She was so proud that it nearly reeked like an odour off of her body.  
   The hideous change contorted her further, so puckered flesh tightened into grey and black lines, her hair in straggly curls around her face while within the dark hair he saw curled ram’s horns that were broken at the edges. They looked, much like the spiny thorns on her body, as if they too had been shoved into her skull as punishment.  
   In a gaping grin, Meg’s teeth jutted out and her guttural laughter caught his attention. He looked away from the hideousness of her true eyes, tried to ignore that mocking laughter that made her more frightening.  
   But it was the sight of her scarred lips bearing evidence of tiny marks at the curve of them that caught his eyes. They looked as if, Castiel realized, her mouth had been sewn shut once before. Fingers slipping, he traced the scarred holes with his finger and Meg’s teeth bared at the touch.  
   “Not as pretty as you thought, huh?”  
   He smoothed his fingers over the top of her mouth, feeling the holed imprints. Meg’s one eyebrow arched high but she didn’t move.  
   “Alastair would sew my mouth shut when I was lippy with him. Or when he was bored. Or when it was Thursday. Or even when it was just because he was feeling down.” She grinned and again he caught sight of her jagged teeth. “Then he would burn my feet until I sang for him, screamed for him. I had to rip the cord in order to open my mouth.”  
   Castiel’s fingers touched the edge of a mark and he realized that the flesh had been torn straight through. Tearing his eyes away from her mouth, he looked up to see her watching him.  
  Meg tossed her head proudly. “I’m gorgeous, aren’t I? All darkness and survival.” She almost preened, reaching up to touch her tangled mess of hair and stroke her thorny face. “Beautiful.”  
   Her pride was throbbing out of her and Castiel reached down to curiously touch one of the thick horns breaking through her breast bone. She thrust forward and the sharp tip poked him in the chest, forcing him to release her. Meg laughed and turned around him, stretching her arms above her head.  
   Glorying in what she was.  
   Still he only watched and slowly came to realize why, unlike him, she did not hesitate to show off her true face to him.  
   The angel knew that, to another demon, she would be beautiful. A dark thing that paraded her sin before others like a glorious nimbus about her. Her feral grin and the ripcord tension in her body made her seem even more wild, even more dangerous.  
If only the others knew what he saw, he doubted they would be as eager to fight her.  
   Finishing her arrogant pirouette, Meg came back to him.  
   “Don’t you think I’m beautiful, Castiel?” Meg taunted in a coy but mocking voice, as if she already knew his answer. He saw it in her eyes, her eagerness to see him totally repelled by her. She had been fascinated by his appearance, but now Castiel sensed her sense of superiority. She knew the difference between them. He was worried his appearance would frighten humans; Meg meanwhile adored her terrifying visage.  
  Meg turned around him, and he saw the shadows behind her gathering into a more half-form, something caught between human, shadow and beast. He realized it was a near-permanent but illusionary state for her.  
   “Am I beautiful?” she repeated, and he heard the change in her voice. The challenge in it.  
   “You are impressive” he muttered, parroting her earlier words to him. Meg’s black eyes crinkled a little at their cracked corners, the inky black lines on grey skin deepening like wrinkles. He’d confused her.  
   But underneath the confusion he thought he saw that she was… thrilled.  
   “I’ve seen other demons,” Castiel began.  
   “Lookin’ under other demons’ skirts? I’m jealous. But what would your Daddy say?” Meg teased and he ignored it, reaching out to touch the smoke drifting from her skin.  
   “I’ve not had a demon who has… interested me as much as you.” He tipped his head. “You are fascinating.”  
   There was no mistaking the look now. Castiel saw the curve of her grin transform to a pleased wickedness, and knew that his choice of words had made her proud. She wanted to be something worth looking at, something worth fearing. Especially by a mortal enemy like an angel.  
   ”You’re as caged by your body as I am by mine, aren’t you?” he asked  
   She tilted her head, silently agreeing with him. Then, with a shake of her head, she was back to a darkly beautiful young woman, her eyes glinting chocolate brown and her red lips parted in a smile. Meg flicked her tongue across her lips to wet them and then took a menacing step into him, tilting her head back as his own lowered a little.  
   “See something you like, Clarence?” she teased as she ran a hand down his arm.  
  Castiel wasn’t about to be put off by her now. He knew why she was doing this.  
   “Maybe.”  
   “Your sweet-talking is getting better,” she murmured, her voice back to that sultry and seductive tone. “Almost make me want to kiss you and say you’re the sweetest.”  
   He stared back and when the tension continued to build Meg turned her attention to the warehouse. She pulled back, taking with her the smell of sulphur and blood. When he felt her push back on his chest he willingly stepped out of her way.  
   “So you showed me yours, I showed you mine. We done here?” Meg snapped as she walked around him. Castiel felt her absence immediately, his fingers stroking the smoke that only he could see. The sudden absence of her darkness stung, like he’d been dunked in cold water after touching hot coals. The trails she left behind scorched his skin and he felt them twist around his own wrists like invisible chains.  
   Meg walked slowly though, heels clicking on the iron walk-way, and Castiel watched her. He saw the shadows hounding her, snarling around her like thick sentient vines of darkness that would protect her. More than before they lashed out, twisted and turned to hide her from him.  
   When she glanced over her shoulder at him, black eyes sparkling with pride and sin, he abandoned his place at the rail to follow her out of the warehouse.


End file.
